Minorities in India - communal violence

In recent weeks, I have posted some articles and links to problematic developments within BJP-run India where minorities are targeted for persecution. The ruling BJP under Narendra Modi is a Hindu extremist political party which preaches and believes in Hindutva in which people of other faiths outside Hinduism has no place in India. The banning of beef consumption in some of the states, which adversely affects livelihood of millions of people of minority religions, including lower-caste Hindus, is a very calculated one to marginalize them and impose hardships that are directed to forced conversion to Hinduism. Yes, protecting the lives of cows is touted as the goal of these chauvinists, but life of a cow cannot be dearer and precious than saving lives of human beings. Rape has also been used by Hindu zealots of the Hindutva to terrorize minorities. 

Here below is an excerpt from a report prepared by Evangelical Fellowship of India and Alliance Defending Freedom, India on the Christian minorities in India :

The Christian community in India is concerned at the intensity of the targeted and communal violence directed against it almost on a pan India basis. Violence against Christians picked up in independent India in the early 1990s reaching its peak in 2008 – 2009 with more than 1000 incidents of violence and hate crimes reported against the Christian community. This continues today as vicious hate campaign, physical violence, police complicity, and State impunity contribute to the persecution of the Christian community in many states of India. Human Rights and Civil Society groups have documented the death of at least two persons in 2014, killed for their Christian faith. The Persecution data lists partially, 147 cases. The two cases of death in communal anti Christian violence were reported from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. An analysis of the data shows Chhattisgarh topping the list with 28 incidents of crime, followed closely by neighbouring Madhya Pradesh with 26, Uttar Pradesh with 18 and Telengana, a newly carved out of Andhra Pradesh, with 15 incidents. Much of the violence has taken place after the new government of the National Democratic alliance headed by the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, came into power on 26 May, 2014.

The violence peaked between August and October with 56 cases, before zooming up to 25 cases during the Christmas season. The violence has continued well into the New Year 2015, with more Catholic churches in the capital city of Delhi targeted as incidents continue in other states. Much of the violence, 54 percent, is of threats, intimidation, coercion, often with the police looking on. Physical violence constituted a quarter of all cases, 24 per cent, and violence against Christian women, a trend that is increasingly being seen since the carnage in Kandhamal, Odisha, in 2007 and 2008, was 11 per cent. Breaking of statues and the Cross, and other acts of desecration were recorded in about 8 per cent of the cases, but many more were also consequent to other forms of violence against institutions. A disturbing trend was violence against Christians in West Bengal, where though one case was formally reported; there have been increasing incidents of hate speech and intimidation.

 Police inaction and its failure to arrest the guilty in most cases, its propensity to try to minimise the crime, and in rural areas especially, its open partisanship has almost become the norm. Police ineptitude in forensic investigations has been seen even in New Delhi where four of the five cases in the months of December 2014 and January 2015 have seen no progress in the investigations. In the one case where there were arrests, the Church and the community have cast doubts on the police version of the motives of the suspects whose images were recorded in the Close Circuit TV cameras installed in the church.

Judith Miller lies again - what's new for a yellow journalist?

Today I came across a Guardian news clip about Judith Miller. Remember her? She was in the business of manufacture of lies about Iraq's so-called WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) program, which was found to be full of lies and nothing else. I wrote a few articles nearly a decade ago pointing out her flaws and yellow journalism. You can view these by clicking here, here, here, and here.

From her latest posting,  the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the neocon mouthpiece for propaganda, seemingly has given her a new life in journalism after she was fired by the NY Times and served prison term for misleading the country.  “No senior official spoon-fed me a line about WMD,” Miller writes in the Journal. “... The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress.”

Miller again ignores extensive reporting showing that the Bush administration was making plans for an Iraq invasion before the advent of intelligence used to justify it.

Declassified memos show that on the day of the September 11 attacks, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked aides to evaluate a plan to “hit SH @ same time” as Osama bin Laden. By November 2001, Rumsfeld was producing page-long outlines on the Iraq invasion with bullet points including “How start?” Bush began meetings in December 2001 with US army general Tommy R Franks and others to begin planning the war, according to the book Plan of Attack by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward. As the war drew closer, other analysis suggests, the administration cherry-picked intelligence to suit a goal that was already in place: take Saddam out.

Many others involved in the sale of the war to the public have since apologized or expressed regret for their role. Former secretary of state Colin Powell, who pushed the flawed intelligence in a February 2003 speech before the United Nations, called the outing a permanent “blot” on his record and said it was “terrible” and “devastating” to realize his presentation of charts and satellite images and intelligence reports added up to a lie. The New York Times itself published a mea culpa for publishing Miller’s reporting as it did.

Obviously, Judith Miller is unapologetic and is surely delusional and needs serious evaluation of her mental health. 
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Here below is my comment sent to the Guardian:
Judith Miller epitomized yellow journalism and was in the business of manufacturing WMD story, which was part of a very sinister program led by the War Party in the USA and the UK. The neocons raised the flag of WMDs pushing the countries to invade Iraq. She was part of that neocon criminal gang. 
It did not take too long for us - and of course, the price was a huge one with murder of nearly a million Iraqi civilians and total destruction of their country - to find Miller's lies and distortions. She was fired from the NY Times for misleading its readers. The WSJ is another neocon newspaper owned by the same War Party that fed lies for selling the war.  It is not too surprising to find today that she is getting a second life in that paper trying to mislead us again. Miller is a disgrace in journalism and so is the WSJ, which has been in the wrong side of history. Shame on her and the WSJ to again mislead the world community!

Suu Kyi confesses that she was always a politician and never a voice of conscience

Suu Kyi has been a great disappointment for those of us who are human rights camp. When she was under house arrest, we campaigned hard for her immediate release hoping that she would promote the cause of pluralism and diversity in her fractured nation of many races and religions. But once released, far from standing out for human rights of the persecuted minorities in her country, she showed her real color - her chauvinistic ugly self. To her, politics has been more important than standing on moral high grounds. 

Thus, it was all too natural for her, at the dismay and utter frustration of us,  to ignore the Rohingya humanitarian crisis when more than 140,000 Rohingya have been displaced and made to live in horrific conditions in concentration camps as a result of genocidal campaigns against them by her own Buddhist majority. Deplorably, she kept silent to their plight. Many of us pondered and struggled to find the answer - how could she be unwilling to offering a strong repudiation of Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim group the country does not recognize as citizens and which the United Nations has called the most persecuted minority on earth. Disappointment, particularly in the international community, has been so great some have called for her Nobel prize to be rescinded. 

In a recent interview with Globe and Mail, she confessed that she was not the voice of conscience. I am glad to read her candid confession and that way no one should entertain any illusion about her chauvinism.  “I’ve always been a politician. I’ve never said that I was a moral organization or anything like that,” she told The Globe and Mail in an interview Friday in the Myanmar capital.

Here you can read her interview by clicking here.

The PA joins ICC

There is little doubt that the Israeli government actions against unarmed civilians in Gaza are war crimes. As the report below from the Miami Herald show now the the Palestinian Authority has formally joined the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, positioning itself to pursue war crimes cases against Israel and deepening the rift between the two sides.

See below for the full report from the newspaper:

Israel denounced the move as “political, cynical and hypocritical,” and said it violated agreements to pursue a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

At a closed ceremony at the court headquarters in The Hague, the Palestinian Authority became the 123rd member of the international tribunal. Established in 2002 to prosecute cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the court has focused largely on atrocities in Africa.

With Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts at an impasse, the Palestinian Authority moved to join the ICC after obtaining observer-state status at the United Nations in an effort to gain international recognition and increase pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian areas.

The United States has joined Israel in opposing the Palestinian actions, calling them unilateral steps circumventing negotiations. Neither the United States nor Israel has ratified the agreement that set up the court.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called the joining of the ICC “a historic day” that “serves as a reminder to the international community of its responsibilities under international law, in order to achieve a just and lasting peace and put an end to the prolonged occupation.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the move, along with what it called other unilateral Palestinian steps, “flagrantly violate the basic principles agreed by the parties, backed by the international community, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Such steps emphasize once again the Palestinians’ refusal to conduct peace negotiations with Israel,” the ministry added in a statement.

The Palestinians are holding back for now on filing complaints to the court, pending a preliminary examination launched by the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, into alleged war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories.

Palestinian officials said earlier that they were preparing submissions to the court on alleged Israeli crimes during last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, and on Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A key motive behind the Palestinian delay may be concern about punitive steps by the U.S. Congress, where there have been threats to freeze aid to the Palestinian Authority should it pursue cases against Israel.

Israel suspended the monthly transfer of tax and customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority after the Palestinians signed on to the ICC in December, deepening a cash crisis in the West Bank. On Friday, the Israeli government said it would release the impounded funds but gave no indication whether monthly transfers would be resumed.

Membership in the ICC also exposes the Palestinians to complaints by Israel for alleged war crimes committed by militants in the Gaza Strip who fired rockets at Israeli towns and cities during last summer’s conflict.

“Palestine acquires all the rights as well as responsibilities that come with being a state party to the statute,” ICC vice president Kuniko Ozaki said at the ceremony, referring to the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty. “These are substantive commitments, which cannot be taken lightly.”

Under ICC guidelines it is a court of last resort, stepping in only when states fail to prosecute cases of alleged war crimes under their jurisdiction.

In an effort to head off prosecution at the court, the Israeli army has announced that it is reviewing more than 120 cases of suspected violations by troops during the Gaza war and that it has ordered 19 criminal investigations into such incidents.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to defend Israeli soldiers against any international prosecution.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article17122454.html#storylink=cpy

Persecution of the Uyghurs of China for keeping beard

In the past I have written a few times about the condition of Uyghurs (also spelled as Uighurs) of China who are another unfortunate people of our time. Like the Rohingyas of Arakan (Rakhine) state of Myanmar (formerly Burma) they are one of the worst persecuted people on earth. They are a Muslim minority who speak a Turkic language. Hundreds of Uyghurs have been killed by the Chinese government over the past two years. Uyghur exiles contend Chinese oppression of cultural and religious freedom sparks the violence.

The Chinese government has made them third class citizens in their own land. They can't practice their religion freely and are even barred from displaying many of their cultural traits. Even keeping a beard by Uyghur man or wearing burqa (chador) by a Uyghur woman can mean long prison terms. 

"A heavy sentence for growing a long beard is typical of the political persecution" faced by Uyghurs, said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress. "If a Chinese person grows a long beard, it's personal freedom and fashion; if a Uyghur does, he's a religious extremist," said Raxit.

The number of criminal trials concluded in Xinjiang in 2014 jumped 40% compared to 2013, the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights advocacy group, said earlier this month. The report concluded that the rise took place after China's leader Xi Jinping launched an aggressive anti-terrorism drive.

See the report below for a case of harassment by the Chinese government:

A Chinese court in Xinjiang province, in the city of Kashgar, recently sentenced a man to six years in prison for “provoking trouble”, allegedly for wearing a beard. His wife was convicted of the same crime for wearing a veil and burqa that hid her face.

A number of local governments in Xinjiang have prohibited so-called “abnormal appearances” in public, including face veils, hijabs, burqas, long beards, and outfits bearing the crescent moon and stars. The ban was launched last year under a campaign called “Project Beauty” to promote what the state says are secular aesthetics over extremist religious thoughts. The campaign includes the establishment of village-based “beauty stations”, house calls by officials, a system of rewards and penalties, and a re-education and career-training program, among other things.

The man imprisoned in Kashgar is a 38-year-old member of China's Uyghur community, the country's second largest Muslim ethnic group, after the Hui. He started growing his beard in 2010, and has maintained it despite several warnings from the beauty-project authorities. The Kashgar court criticized him for disobeying law and intentionally “picking fights and provoking trouble”. Several others have been prosecuted for their clothes since the beginning of this year, according to a report from China Youth Daily on March 29.

Soon after news of the Kashgar trial started circulating online, however, it disappeared from the Chinese Internet. On March 30, the reporter responsible for breaking the story issued a public apology for “unprofessionalism”, but left no indication of what part of her story was inaccurate.

The micro-blogging service Weibo has deleted many comments about the case. Some express anxiety about the prosecution's arbitrary use of the law on “provoking trouble”.

... But does the Chinese government really believe it will strengthen security by imposing a dress code on a religious group?

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For a similar report, click here.

What price kowtowing with Netanyahu?

If you have thought that you had seen the worst of Israel's Netanyahu, think again. As I have said elsewhere when we feed an unruly donkey with carrot we only feed its ego. Such acts of kindness don't sober it up. It requires sticks once in a while to put it in the right track. For too long, the USA and our western friends have been kowtowing with Netanyahu who is a war criminal. He needs to be sent to the ICC for his horrendous crimes in Gaza, which are crimes against humanity. But the USA and our partners have shielded him from such a fate. Now see what he is saying about the latest attempts by the Obama administration and the partners in P5+1 that are negotiating a deal with Iran.

In antiwar.com Justin Raimondo writes, "At the latest Israeli cabinet meeting Netanyahu reported that his American vassals are all lined up to scotch any agreement:

“I just came from speaking with the Republican leader in the Senate, Senator [Mitch] McConnell, and over the weekend I spoke with the Democratic leader in the Senate, Senator Harry Reid. I heard from both of them strong and robust bipartisan support for Israel, which is, of course, very important. I expressed to them my deep concern regarding the emerging agreement with Iran in the nuclear talks. This deal, as it appears to be emerging, bears out all of our fears, and even more than that.”

“In Yemen," he averred, "the proxies of Iran are taking over large parts of the country and they are attempting to seize control of the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb strait." Lumping all his enemies into a single sinister amalgam, Bibi went ballistic:

“After the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad axis, Iran is conducting a pincer movement to the south to conquer the entire Middle East. The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is very dangerous to humanity, and must be stopped.”

The "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis"?

This is the ultimate expression of the paranoia – the sheer outright craziness – represented not only by the Israeli Prime Minister but by the ultra-nationalists who have come to dominate Israel’s political landscape. It is the logical extension of orthodox Zionist ideology, which claims that Jews can only find safety in Israel – because the whole world is plotting against them.

After all, who is represented in Lausanne? The P5+1: the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany, the world’s major powers. In Bibi’s fantastic formulation, both the West and the East are aligned with Iran in an "axis of evil" – to utilize Bush speechwriter David Frum’s phrase – against the Jewish state.

After pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into Israel, after granting them unconditional diplomatic and military support for many years, after endless reiterations by US politicians – including Barack Obama – of America’s undying allegiance to Israel’s security – this is what we get. We’re part of the "axis of evil," along with Iran, Syria, and North Korea!

That is where years of kowtowing to Tel Aviv have gotten us."

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To read the full report click here.

A Second Look at the Pareto Principle

Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923) was an Italian civil engineer who became more famous as an economist, political scientist and philosopher. He gave the world what we call the 'Pareto Principle'. At the University of Lausanne, Switzerland he published his first paper "Cours d'économie politique" in 1896. Studying income distribution of people, he found that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This was an important contribution, whose scope was not limited to economics alone, but spanned several areas.

The quality guru Joseph Juran popularized the Pareto Principle. In reliability engineering it is now known that 80% of the problems or pains come from 20% of the 'bad actors'. In problem solving, esp. with Lean Six Sigma projects, we have been preaching the mantra of Pareto for decades saying that the root cause(s) of the problem is (are) few, and usually can be found within 20% of the input factors that contribute to 80% of the effects [not strictly true, though]. So rather than trying to find a needle in a haystack a smart problem solver should rather focus on a limited area. In the business world, similarly, a common rule of thumb says that "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients." 

Pareto Principle is often called the ‘80/20 Rule’. You can apply the 80/20 Rule to almost anything, from the science of management to the physical world. Project Managers know that 20 % of the work (the first 10% and the last 10%) consume 80 % of your time and resources. You probably can find out that 20 % of your stock is taking up 80 % of your warehouse space and that 80 % of your stock comes from 20 % of your suppliers. If you are a site manager, 20% of your staff will cause 80 % of your problems, but another 20 % of your staff will provide 80 % of your production. Similarly, don’t be surprised to know that 80 % of your sales revenue is probably coming from 20 % of your sales staff. Don’t be surprised either to find out that 80% of customer complaint comes from 20% of your customers.

It is not difficult to understand why those smart sales guys are interested in hooking up or earning the loyalty of their customers by providing preferential services - platinum or gold service as against bronze service – to their target clients. One would call such a customer service a highly discriminatory practice due to the fact that not all the customers are treated equally. The sad reality is you can see such discriminatory treatments in most service sectors today, even with the airlines industry.

Last Monday I was on a flight to Detroit from Philadelphia. I took a flight with Delta Airlines. Like all other airlines these days, Delta has a frequent flyer program. I don't fly Delta as often as I do using US Airways. Naturally, I was put in Zone 2 for boarding the plane. Those with the chairman's/platinum or better status than me - with hundreds of thousands of flown miles - were preferred over me in boarding the flight earlier. Because of the limited overhead luggage space available by the time I boarded the plane, I had to put one of the small carry-on bags underneath the passenger’s seat in front of me. It was an inconvenient flight with limited space for my feet to rest, but quite normal experience these days for most passengers who make up roughly 80% of the ‘discriminated’ bunch who are not in the preferred boarding categories, including Zone 1.

As can be seen, the Pareto Principle is responsible for popularizing the use of the term "elite" in social analysis. It was a Darwinian type finding – survival of the fittest. Society has never been a "social pyramid" with the proportion of rich to poor sloping gently – almost in a linear way - from one class to the next. “Instead it was more of a ‘social arrow’ – very fat on the bottom where the mass of men live,” notes mathematician Prof. Benoit Mandelbrot (known for his work with the fractals), “and very thin at the top where sit the wealthy elite. Nor was this effect by chance; the data did not remotely fit a bell curve, as one would expect if wealth were distributed randomly.”

Pareto’s work showed that in our society, a very small number of powerful elites – elite of the elite class - sit at the top of this ‘social pyramid’ who control almost everything – the lion share - while a vast majority – starving and unfed – stays in the bottom layer. Elites survive and help each other while others suffer. Thus, what was once 80% may actually become 99% later. Consider, for instance, the matter of wealth in our time. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, held in January, among some of the world's most influential political and business leaders, it was announced that the wealth of the 80 richest people in the world now equals that of the 3.5 billion people -- the poorest half of the world's population. The Oxfam report observed that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between 2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5 billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009. In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to 80 in 2014.

Oxfam also estimated that by next year, the wealth accumulated by the richest one percent of the world's population would exceed that of the other 99 percent.

Are you surprised, where we are heading? I am not. Whether we like to admit or not: the harsh fact is - growing inequality between the rich and the poor has been fueled by the capitalist system and a society that values material wealth above everything else. We have become a consumer society who does not mind buying things we don't need, with money we don't have to impress the people we don't like. At this rate, we are doomed to generate twice the waste by 2025 that we generate today. Global poverty has been spurred on by the inefficient and inequitable distribution of opportunities in this current system.

As is well known among social scientists, Pareto’s work drew the attention of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) who in his first years of power (1922-1945) destroyed political liberalism, and gradually gave the Italian state its fascist, totalitarian character. With the ever widening of the wealth gap, are we witnessing the underpinning of a resurgent fascism in our time?

Unless our generation finds a better system that guarantees an equitable distribution of opportunities, which is at the heart of wealth gap, I am afraid we shall witness what was once 80% in Pareto’s time to grow to 99% and higher.